The Next Person You Meet in Heaven(11)

Where are we?

“You don’t remember?”

How could I remember? Isn’t this your memory?

“Memories intersect.”

They glided down a hallway and entered a private room. Sameer approached the patient in bed, a little girl with butterscotch curls whose left arm was bandaged from her elbow to her fingers.

“How are we doing, Annie?” he asked.

As the girl’s mouth moved, Annie felt herself answer, “I’m scared.”





Annie Makes a Mistake


She is eight years old and on the train to Ruby Pier. She wears cutoff shorts and a lime green T-shirt with a cartoon duck on the front. Her mother sits next to her, beside her latest boyfriend, Bob.

Bob has a thick mustache that covers his upper lip. Tony, the boyfriend before Bob, always wore sunglasses. Dwayne, the one before Tony, had a tattoo on his wrist. None of the boyfriends really speak to Annie. Only if she asks them something.

On the train, Bob takes her mother’s hand and plays with it, but she pushes him off, nodding towards her daughter. Annie wonders if this means her mother doesn’t like Bob.

They walk through the entrance of Ruby Pier, beneath spires and minarets and a giant arch. Annie gazes at the image of a woman in a high-collared dress holding a parasol—Ruby herself—welcoming guests to her park. After her father left, Annie and her mother came here often, just the two of them. They rode carousel horses and drank slushies and ate corn dogs. It was fun. But lately, boyfriends have been coming, too. Annie wishes it could go back to the way it was.

Her mother buys twenty tickets and warns Annie to stay away from grown-up rides like the roller coasters or Freddy’s Free Fall. Annie nods. She knows the routine. She knows the snack bar. She knows the bumper cars. She knows her mother will go away with Bob and only come back at four o’clock, asking, “Did you have fun, Annie?” But she won’t really care if Annie had fun.

By midafternoon the sun is hot, and Annie sits under a table umbrella. She is bored. The old man who fixes the rides walks past, the one with the patch on his uniform that says EDDIE and MAINTENANCE. He sits down across the way, looking around as if studying the rides.

Annie approaches, hoping he has pipe cleaners in his pocket.

“ ’Scuuuse me, Eddie Maint’nance?”

He sighs. “Just Eddie.”

“Eddie?”

“Um-hmm?”

“Can you make me …?”

She puts her hands together as if praying.

“C’mon, kiddo. I don’t have all day.”

When she asks for an animal, he begins twisting yellow pipe cleaners together. He hands her a figure, shaped like a rabbit, which she takes happily and runs back to the umbrella table.

She plays with it for a while. But soon she is bored again. It is only two o’clock. She walks to the midway and tries a game, throwing wooden rings at glass bottles. It costs her a ticket, but they give you a prize no matter what.

After three missed tosses, she is handed a small plastic package: inside is a balsa wood airplane. She fits one piece into the other. She throws it high. It flies in a loop. She does it again.

On her last toss, the plane glides over the heads of customers and lands on the other side of a railing, the one that blocks access to the base of Freddy’s Free Fall. Annie looks both ways. The adults tower over her.

She slides under the rail.

She picks up the plane.

Then a woman screams.

Everyone is pointing at the sky.





SUDDENLY, it all made sense, who Sameer was, why they were in this hospital. Annie’s spirit was inside her childhood body, lying in the hospital bed, looking out through youthful eyes. She wiggled her feet, covered in yellow hospital socks.

“You were my doctor,” Annie whispered.

“Your voice is returning,” Sameer said.

Annie coughed, trying to bring more heft to the words.

“I sound like a child.”

“You work your way along in heaven.”

“Why am I reliving this?”

“Because it all ties together. When I grew up, I realized how lucky I’d been. I got serious. I studied. I went to college, then medical school. I specialized in replantation.”

Annie squinted. “Replantation?”

“A fancy word for reconnecting body parts.”

“So you saved my hand?”

“Me and three other doctors. You only had a few hours. After that, it would have been too late.”

Annie stared at her young, bandaged appendage.

“I can’t remember the accident,” she said. “I blacked the whole thing out.”

“Understandable.”

“And I’m really sorry, but I don’t remember you.”

Sameer shrugged. “Lots of kids don’t remember their doctors. Starting with the ones who delivered them.”



Annie studied the mature face before her, the jowls heavy with middle age, the temples flecked with gray hair. In the dark eyes, she saw the shadow of the impulsive boy.

“If this is really heaven,” she asked, “why are you the person greeting me? Aren’t I supposed to see God? Or Jesus? Or at least someone I remember?”

“That comes in time,” Sameer said. “But the five people you meet first are chosen for a reason. They affected you in some way on earth. Maybe you knew them. Maybe you didn’t.”